Chapter 392 The Orphanage's Lies: The Handsome Flower Boy 92
They will never know that their son is in hell right now.
Zhou Weimin woke up amidst a jolt, smelling a foul stench and seeing nothing but darkness.
Beneath him was a cold, greasy board that felt like steel. He listened to the sounds around him and heard a dull rumbling that never stopped.
Zhou Weimin tried to move, but found that his hands and feet were tied with ropes that were very rough, and his mouth was stuffed with rags.
This is the hold of a cargo ship. During the dark and dreary voyage, he could only get a little bit of stale hard bread and murky water each day.
Fear and despair consumed him; he became incontinent, filthy, and resembled a piece of real garbage.
Zhou Weimin didn't know how many days had passed, nor did he count them precisely, but a very long time passed before the hatch was finally opened.
As soon as the door opened, the glaring sunlight hit the eye, mixed with a strong, salty, and fishy sea breeze.
Then several people in work clothes dragged him out. These people all had Asian faces, but they handed Zhou Weimin over to a group of burly foreign men with dark skin and wearing dirty vests.
They toss it around like they're throwing away cargo.
Zhou Weimin had no strength to resist along the way. He was so hungry that his legs were weak and his feet were trembling. Moreover, he was already half disabled.
He was taken to a mining area where dust was flying everywhere.
This is some unknown corner of Africa, where there is no law, only whips and fists.
Even if he is disabled in both legs, he will not receive any special treatment here. He will only be tortured by the foreman and whipped for working slowly.
After being taken to the mining area, Zhou Weimin dragged his crippled legs to carry ore every day. His legs were barely tied with wooden boards, and he had to crawl to work.
If you were even slightly slow in your work, you would be beaten up. The food you were given was moldy cassava and smelly dried fish, and even the smelly dried fish was a luxury.
At night, we slept in shacks where dozens of people were crammed together. The stench was unbearable, and the shacks were full of fleas and bedbugs.
Zhou Weimin began to miss the old house his parents lived in in Beijing, even though it was just a coal stove and they ate fatty meat.
He really missed those days when his parents took care of him, he didn't have to lift a finger, and he could even throw a little fire on them now and then.
The nightmare that drove Zhou Weimin to despair occurred on a sweltering night, so hot that he tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
A black worker, covered in sweat and with a body as hard as an iron tower, reached for his bunk. All the men here were very strong and powerful, and he couldn't push him away at all.
He struggled, pleaded, and cried, but was met with even more brutal treatment. None of the people around him who were clearly not asleep stepped forward to help him.
His mouth was covered, and the hands covering his mouth were still covered in slag.
Not only did no one offer him any help, but some people even joined in the abuse.
The next day, Zhou Weimin was kicked to work like a dead dog, and Gongde and the others looked at him with mockery in their eyes.
They all knew what was happening, but no one stopped it.
Zhou Weimin, your dignity, your personality, everything that belongs to a human being, has all vanished here. You have nothing left.
He lost a man's most precious possession: his chastity!
He was an educated intellectual, but here, everything he had once been proud of was useless; he had become a beast who only knew how to labor, endure, and shed tears.
There was no other way but to silently endure crying in the dead of night.
Here, he had ample time to reminisce about the past and to think about many things.
I think of springtime in Beijing, the Wang family's former life of luxury, Shen Ci's calm face, and Lu Jinnian's clear eyes.
I also recalled the days when I was sent to work in Shenjia Village, and the scenes of living with Shen Ci, the child, and our family of three.
Those memories are as distant as a past life, yet the pain is as fresh as yesterday.
He dared not die, because the overseer had said that if he died, he would be thrown to the wild dogs and there would be no grave.
He couldn't bear to die either; better to live a miserable life than to die. Even though his life was full of humiliation and torment, he couldn't bear to die.
He wants to live, even if it means suffering.
Shortly after Zhou Weimin disappeared, Shen Ci bought the land in the mass grave area on the outskirts of Beijing and fenced it off. The land was already deserted and rarely visited, so the purchase price was very cheap.
She then discovered another system reward: a mysterious legacy.
One night, Shen Ci drove alone to a mass grave on the outskirts of Beijing.
Based on the precise coordinates provided by the system, she found the inconspicuous mound among a group of graves. The area was overgrown with weeds, but it looked quite intimidating.
But she wasn't afraid. If there were ghosts, wouldn't all dead people become ghosts?
This mound of earth doesn't even qualify as a grave. There's a crooked wooden sign in front of it, with very blurry writing. I shone a flashlight on it to take a look.
It actually bears the name Zhou Weimin. To hide treasure, Zhou Weimin even erected a grave for himself. Doesn't he feel it's unlucky?
Without hesitation, Shen Ci took out the prepared tools and began digging.
The shovel hit something hard less than a meter below the ground. When it was pulled out, it turned out to be four large wooden boxes wrapped in tarpaulin and coated with a thick layer of moisture-proof tung oil.
Upon opening the first box, under the dim light of a flashlight, lay neatly stacked gold bars.
The second and third boxes contained carefully wrapped antique porcelain pieces: a large blue-and-white jar with lotus scrolls, a famille rose vase with a hundred deer design, and an underglaze red Yuhuchun vase...
Even though Shen Ci wasn't very knowledgeable about these things, he could tell that they were priceless treasures.
The last box contained scrolls of calligraphy and paintings. I quickly glanced at them with a flashlight and was surprised to find landscapes by Ni Zan and calligraphy by Wen Zhengming.
According to the reward notification from the system, these things were Zhou Weimin's savings accumulated over the years by abusing his position; they were his true trump cards.
Most of these antiques were stolen from his father-in-law's house by this good son-in-law, and they belonged to the Wang family's collection.
Zhou Weimin's family were commoners, but the Wang family had produced people who held high-ranking official positions, and their background was much deeper than that of the Zhou family.
When the Wang family fell from power, there was a great deal of panic, yet he was still able to hide so many things and keep them hidden from use.
He dared not. Once the Wang family fell from power, he also got into legal trouble. Everyone knew that he was now almost like a beggar, unable to afford food and his family had nowhere to live.
If he were to suddenly produce a huge sum of money at this point, everyone would be suspicious.
Zhou Weimin was naturally suspicious and worried that there were still eyes watching him from the shadows, so he had no intention of using these things in the short term.
Even when his own parents were starving and freezing, having to sweep the streets every day and not having enough to eat, he remained unmoved.
The richer a person is, the stingier they are. Zhou Weimin has become a miser, like a rat. All of this is what he has accumulated over the years, and he is reluctant to use it unless he is in dire need.
Now, he'll never have the chance to use it again.
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